“Play the Man … for Your Bleeding Country”
“Play the Man … for Your Bleeding Country”
Military Chaplains as Gender Brokers During the American Revolutionary War
This chapter examines masculinity and ministry during the American Revolution. Beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century, the emergence of evangelical revivalism led to a new form of manhood, one based on Christian concepts of humility, piety, and sobriety. American evangelicals counseled withdrawal from secular society in favor of prayer, contemplation, and circumspect behavior, as male converts to evangelical Christianity trod a new path toward manhood. The exemplar of this ideal was the minister, who provided male leadership within the church but also endorsed and acted out Christian principles of prudence, temperance, meditation, and abstention from sinful activities and worldly pursuits. When the war against Britain began, this exemplary role was taken on by military chaplains, pious believers who abhorred violence and dissension and yet wished to serve their country as men. Two different modes of white masculinity came together in the role of the military chaplain during the American Revolutionary War. Clergy who served as chaplains with the American forces censored the customs of military life at the same time that they bolstered traditional manliness through religious leadership and rhetoric. Chaplains functioned as gender brokers in this military context, fusing the seeming contradiction of traditional male traits, such as contention and combativeness, with the female characteristics of clerical service: nurturing the sick, consoling the dying, and tending to the dead.
Keywords: masculinity, ministry, American Revolution, manliness, Christianity, chaplains, clergy, American evangelicals
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
